Word.ws English Dictionary

table stakes

table stakes noun: a rule whereby players are only allowed to bet the money they have on the table.

Noun

table stakes pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A rule whereby players are only allowed to bet the money they have on the table.
  2. (figuratively, plural, plural-only) The stake that a stakeholder must put up even just to earn a place at the table (a chance to compete), let alone ensure a win.
    • So what makes people want to 'listen' to a brand? Sounding like a human, ugh; that's table stakes. If that's all you can say about your social approach, you're not trying hard enough.2016, Geoffrey Colon, Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal, →ISBN, page 143
  3. (plural, plural-only) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see table, stakes.

Questions about table stakes

What does table stakes mean?
Table stakes means a rule whereby players are only allowed to bet the money they have on the table.
What part of speech is table stakes?
Table stakes is a noun.

Words near table stakes in the dictionary

  1. table soccer
  2. table song
  3. table songs
  4. table spice
  5. table spices
  6. table stakes
  7. table steel
  8. table steel guitar
  9. table steel guitarist
  10. table steel guitarists
  11. table steel guitars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: table stakes (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “table stakes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/table_stakes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.